SHAKESPEARE ON MONASTIC LIFE: NUNS AND FRIARS IN MEASURE FOR MEASURE

2001 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 248-272
Author(s):  
David Beauregard
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Measure For Measure ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
The Church

AbstractAgainst recent claims that Shakespeare satirizes and demystifies religious life in Measure for Measure, this article maintains that Shakespeare is generally sympathetic to Franciscan nuns and friars, particularly so in this play. Indeed, Shakespeare works against the anti-fraternal tradition by reversing its conventions. Nuns and friars are represented as virtue figures, not vice figures. The secular characters are guilty of sexual irregularities, whereas the religious are chaste and work to regularize the marriages of the lay figures. The usual exposure of the sexual corruption and hypocrisy of the friar backfires on Lucio, the chief vice figure in the play. The virginal and temperate Isabella, a secular figure in Shakespeare's sources, is portrayed as a prospective novice of the Poor Clares over against the puritanical Angelo, whose hypocritical asceticism turns into lust. Angelo conducts a public shaming English Protestant style, whereas the Duke in Catholic fashion conducts a sympathetic auricular confession. Finally Isabella does not sacrifice her virginity or accept the Duke's offer of marriage, two things her counterparts in the sources invariably do. Shakespeare's reversal of anti-Catholic conventions requires us to reposition him as a Catholic rather than a conforming member of the Church of England.

William John Butler and the revival of the Ascetic Tradition

1985 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 365-376
Author(s):  
Ann Frances
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
The Church

William John Butler, sometime vicar of Wantage in Berkshire and founder of the Community of St Mary the Virgin, gave a concrete and contemporary expression to an aspect of the ascetic idea current among followers of the Oxford Movement, which was revealed in their desire to restore monastic life in the Church in England. The Community founded by Butler was one of the earliest of the indigenous Anglican communities for women. In no way could the desert ideal or the later pre-Reformation models of religious life be reconstructed, nor would they have been appropriate in the climate of the time. However Butler believed, as had Newman, Pusey and others, that the basic principles of monastic life remained valid and they could and should find their place in the contemporary Church of England. It was believed that the Church had the grace and the resources of devotion within itself to give birth to the religious life anew, to continue its nurture and promote its development. Certainly the enhanced spirituality resulting from the example of deep devotion of the Tractarians themselves and that of their followers engendered a religious atmosphere in which new spiritual adventures were made possible.

Tract 90

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. G. Pahls ◽  
Kenneth Parker
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Best Effort ◽  
The Church

In 1864, John Henry Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua characterized Tract 90 as his last best effort to remain in the Church of England. While Newman always celebrated his reliance on Anglican Caroline divines, this chapter demonstrates his unacknowledged debt to a notable Oxford convert of the Caroline period, Christopher Davenport (1598–1680), known in Franciscan religious life as Franciscus à Sancta Clara. Davenport served as Catholic chaplain to Queen Henrietta Maria and penned his irenic Paraphrastica Expositio Articulorum Confessionis Anglicanae (1634) to promote the reunion of the churches of England and Rome. The chapter demonstrates Newman’s use and close reading of Davenport’s work, analysing numerous paraphrases that Newman employed to build his arguments.

Rural Religion and the Politeness of Parsons: The Church of England in South Warwickshire, C.1689–C.1820

2006 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 282-293
Author(s):  
Colin Haydon
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Agricultural Trade ◽  
Rural Religion ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Trade Unionist ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Church ◽  
Agricultural Labourers

Joseph Arch, the agricultural trade unionist, was born in 1826 at Barford in south Warwickshire. In his autobiography, he recalled, as a boy, witnessing the Eucharist in the village church: First, up walked the squire to the communion rails; the farmers went up next; then up went the tradesmen, the shopkeepers, the wheelwright, and the blacksmith; and then, the very last of all, went the poor agricultural labourers … [N]obody else knelt with them … ‘[N]ever for me!‘,vowed Arch.

Sacerdotalism

1910 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-356
Author(s):  
George E. Horr
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
The Church ◽  
Do So

The provisions for the fourth of the series of Dudleian Lectures are as follows:“The fourth and last lecture I would have for the maintaining, explaining, and proving the validity of the ordination of ministers or pastors of the churches, and so their administration of the sacraments or ordinances of religion as the same hath been practiced in New England, from the first beginning of it, and so continued at this day. Not that I would in any wise invalidate Episcopal Ordination, as it is commonly called and practiced in the Church of England; but I do esteem the method of ordination as practiced in Scotland, at Geneva, and among the dissenters in England, and in the churches in this country, to be very safe, Scriptural and valid; and that the great Head of the church, by his blessed spirit, hath owned, sanctified, and blessed them accordingly, and will continue to do so to the end of the World. Amen.”The topic of Sacerdotalism is naturally involved in the terms of this Foundation.The term “Sacerdotalism” has been defined as “the doctrine that the man who ministers in sacred things, the institution through which and the office or order in which he ministers, the acts he performs, the sacraments and rites he celebrates, are so ordained and constituted of God as to be the peculiar channels of His grace, essential to true worship, necessary to the being of religion, and the full realization of the religious life.”

scholarly journals The problem of the female priesthood in foreign Protestantism

2009 ◽  
pp. 145-152
Author(s):  
O. Vynnychenko-Boruh
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Worship Services ◽  
The World ◽  
Radical Revision ◽  
The Church

One of the tendencies of modern transformations in the religious sphere, in particular in the world of Protestantism, is the desire for gender equality. The problem of "woman and religion" has become extremely urgent over the last decades, especially on the issue of women's priesthood. There is evidence that the proportion of women in the religious life of only Christian denominations has increased from 10 percent in the early twentieth century. to 40 at the beginning of the XXI century. The theological justification for the idea of ​​women's participation in organizing and conducting worship services was first formulated at the beginning of the 20th century in the Church of England. And it was the discussion around this provision that went beyond the Anglican Church that led to a radical revision of the traditional position of some Protestant churches, both as a motive and a reflection of profound changes in Christianity.

Some Notes on the Recusant Rolls of the Exchequer 1

1958 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
pp. 182-198
Author(s):  
Hugh Bowler
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Common Prayer ◽  
The Church

Recusancy was the Elizabethan term for the refusal (Lat. recusare) to attend, in one's “parish church, chapel or usual place of common prayer”, the Edwardian services of the Church of England as established by the Act of Uniformity in 1559 (1 Eliz., cap. 2). Among the penalties prescribed by this same Act was a fine of 12d., to be levied by the churchwardens for every Sunday or festival on which a person omitted attendance. These forfeitures were allocated not to the Crown but “to the use of the poor of the parish”; consequently the Exchequer rolls, being concerned only with the revenue of the Crown, bear no record of them.

The Caldey Monks and the Catholic Press, 1905–1913

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-298
Author(s):  
Rene M. Kollar
Keyword(s):  
Medical Student ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Entire Life ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
The Church ◽  
Benedictine Monasticism

Aelred Calyle (1874–1955) devoted his entire life as an Anglican to the establishment of Benedictine monasticism in the Church of England. Monastic life had attracted him early: as a medical student in London he joined a brotherhood in 1893; he often visited Buckfast Abbey, where he almost converted to Roman Catholicism; and in 1898 he took private vows of poverty, chastity and obedience according to the Rule of Saint Benedict. In the same year, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Frederick Temple, sanctioned his solemn profession as an Anglican Benedictine monk. Four years later, Temple also signed a charter which commissioned Carlyle to found an Anglican monastery and appointed him as its abbot. With the approbation of William Maclagan, the Archbishop of York, Bishop Charles Grafton ordained him a priest on 15 November 1904, in his American diocese of Fond- du-Lac. Along with archiepiscopal sanction and orders, Carlyle also enjoyed the patronage of Lord Halifax, the prominent Anglo-Catholic. In 1902, Carlyle accepted Halifax’s invitation to settle at his estate at Painsthorpe in Yorkshire.

Newman’s ‘Anglican Deathbed’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheridan Gilley
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
The Church

In Tract 90 (1841) John Henry Newman attempted to reconcile the Thirty-Nine Articles with Catholic teaching. Severely attacked by the bishops of the Church of England, Tract 90 brought the series of Tracts to an end. Newman then let the leadership of the Movement pass to radicals like William George Ward, whose insistence that he rejected not one Roman doctrine led to his degradation from his degrees. Newman resigned his parish of St Mary the Virgin in 1843 and his orders in 1845, when he became a Roman Catholic. His submission to Rome became the ‘type’ of such Anglican conversions, which became part of the controversial pattern of English religious life.

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